[JasonB]

Ah well, that's a story in itself, which I've only found out about through researching this project.

There were several versions of Cinerama. The first was introduced in 1952. It was hugely complex, requiring three 35mm film cameras shooting in unison during filming to achieve the full widescreen, and similarly three projectors to show the film. The projection screen was also complex, having a 146 degree arc curve, and being made up of hundreds of thin vertical strips, all of which directly faced the audience rather than the centre of the arc of the screen.

Understandably, there weren't a vast amount of films made in this format, and very few cinemas to show them. Nowadays there are only three cinemas in the world which can show true Cinerama, one of them in Bradford.

But by the 1960s another version of Cinerama was introduced which used a much larger negative size to achieve the same detail, quality, and widescreen effect, but it only required one camera to film with, one projector to show it, and one flat screen to watch it.

Fortunately, Grand Prix was filmed in this format, which I think means that any cinema with a 70mm Cinerama compatible projector could show the film. It also means that the transfer to digital media retains a very high quality, which I think you can still see in the videos.

So, do they still do it? Well, yes and no. I doubt that a 50 year old film holds much interest for a younger audience, and those of us who are older will likely have seen it already, so I doubt your local cinema will be showing it. But they must still have projectors capable of it, because the Hateful Eight, Tarantino's 2015 film was produced and released in the same format.

So there you go.